There is a huge problem today in how Family Court has decided that their role is to oversee families after divorce. Time and time again I remind court authorities that they cannot force co-parenting; it will either happen naturally, or it won’t. Time and time again I listen to court authorities continue to believe that it is their duty to determine how parents will parent their children after divorce, and to force these parents “get along” to make a better life for the children. Still, I persist in trying to stop court ordered co-parenting. Many people think that I am anti-co-parenting. I am not. I am just a realist, and a champion for peace in the home of parents and their children.

Co-parenting is the best way to move past divorce. It is the best way for parents, and the best way for children. It is the best way to create a healthy, functional family. I do not dispute that, and I would not interfere with families who choose to do that for their family. I am a supporter of co-parenting where it can and does work. On this, I do not disagree with court authorities about co-parenting. Where I disagree with the court authorities is when they put parents and their children through hell to try to get them there. My belief is that if parents are going to co-parent, they will do so without being forced by a court. It comes naturally to those families, after they have been allowed to heal the hurts that created the divorce. When it doesn’t come naturally, it is my belief that the harm caused by the court authorities who “case manage” the family for years and years, is more harmful than if those families are allowed to choose a different way to parent after divorce. It prolongs the pain and anguish for each member of the family, and it actually interferes with the healing process of each member of the family. Forced co-parenting creates high levels of distrust, which generates much higher levels of hostility, and leads more families into the category of high conflict, as those parents feel pressured and depleted, emotionally and financially. The parents feel imprisoned and no longer feel that they control their own destiny. This affects the whole family, including extended family members.

A recent op-ed in the New York Times speaks to how divorced parents lost their rights. Courts do not take the same control of married families, as they should not, but they seem to feel obligated to do so when people with children terminate a marriage. I do not think they have the right to do this in any family. There are many ways to parent after divorce. Families can co-parent, parallel parent, and alternate parenting. Who said that the courts should get to dictate which method you choose? When did it become illegal to parallel or alternate parenting?

When I was married, my husband and I never referred to our parenting style as co-parenting. We never heard the term “co-parenting” until after we divorced and we experienced a conflict. The word was in our divorce decree, but we never really paid much attention to it until court authorities started chastising us for not “co-parenting”. Had we not had a post decree conflict that took us back to court, we would have gone happily on our way, having very little to do with each other, parenting separately, and both parents and children, would have never been the wiser. We would have never called that wrong for our family, and we would never have considered it to be illegal. Do you know why? Because it is not illegal for us to live our lives as we see fit, and to parent our children, as we see fit, even when doing so deviates from the group think of Family Court authorities. I’m not sure what one might have called the way my ex husband and I were parenting, in between the decree and the conflict that lead to the shackles of the Family Court takeover, but it was natural for us and informative. We did not need to discuss the children much and each had our own way of parenting the children, based on the fact that we hadn’t spent much time doing anything together. My husband had not been very interested in doing things as a family, including the years that we were married, so it was natural for us to do our own things with the children. Even though we kept things separate, we knew enough to tell the other when there was an important school and medical matter that arose. No one had to tell us to act, we just knew to tell the other because we did know right from wrong, as it went along with our morals, values and beliefs. The relationship wasn’t perfect, not much is perfect in a life, but it was manageable and peaceful. Once family court authorities told us how wrong it was and took our family captive, we no longer knew wrong from right. The reason we could never know wrong from right is because those court authorities wanted us to live under their morals, values and beliefs. They were strangers. How can we know what is right and wrong in their eyes, especially where parenting is concerned? There is no manual on how to parent, and no one ever gave us a manual to explain the court way of parenting. Another problem was that the court way of co-parenting changed with each individual court authority who came along. Just when you thought you had figured it out, someone new came along with their morals, values and beliefs, and we had to try to conform again. It was a never-ending process of trying to follow rules in a game where the rules kept changing and the goal posts kept getting moved.

A friend and I were discussing co-parenting and the courts the other day. We were trying to figure out why court authorities ever came to the belief that they needed to involve themselves in relationships. Why would anyone think it was a good idea? Our discussion went to how the court should be able to terminate a marriage, and to ensure that both parents are able to establish a continuing relationship with the children, but we drew the line at allowing the court to determine the relationship between the parents. To us, you cannot court order relationships. Period. Think about the two of us as friends. We are very close friends and have been friends for a number of years. We have had our disputes over the years, and even did end our friendship for a couple of months at one time. This “breakup” was created when we were having a profound difference in a situation which showed the difference in our values and beliefs, and neither wanted to bend our values and beliefs to cater to the other. Luckily, we were able to come together and resolve those differences, and our friendship is stronger than ever. We have figured out, all on our own, how to maintain our friendship, but still allow each other to have our different beliefs. Had one of us decided that the friendship was not worth working things out, the friendship would have ended. Neither of us would have been able to force the other back in, and no court would have cared how we moved forward after the split.

Should a court have told us that one of us had to cater to the other? Do you think we’d be friends now if one of us had to give up our core values for the other? How often would we have needed to return to court to ensure that we stayed in the relationship? That’s what we are doing by having Family Courts “manage” post decree conflicts. Why don’t courts interfere in all relationships? When someone wants to end a relationship, shouldn’t they be allowed to do so without judgement? Should the next step in Family Court be to have a friend take the other friend to court to make one stay in the relationship? It sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? But that is what we are doing with forced co-parenting. Since the courts force co-parenting on this ridiculous argument that it is “in the best interests of the children”, maybe the courts should not allow divorce for couples with children. Research also shows that children whose parents stay married do better overall so why is it not considered the best interest of the children to force the parents to stay married? Because it is ridiculous to court order relationships! That’s why!

We need to get away from this notion that any court or law can force a relationship to continue. They can’t. Family Court should continue to free people from of a marital relationship they no longer want, but they need to stop there. They need to get out of relationship matters, stop with co-parenting orders and stop with post decree conflict resolution. Couples are made up of 2 individuals, each of whom has the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in these United States of America. Most people will negotiate a way to continue on as parents in a way most beneficial to their children. For those who won’t, there are probably equal numbers of married parents who are not parenting as Family Court would like them to either. The difference is that Family court doesn’t have the authority to dictate how married people parent anymore than they do with divorced parents. It is a myth to think they can, and the reason why some families get embroiled in high conflict situations that devastate their children for years.

Co-parenting is not only a style of parenting after divorce, it is also a relationship between two people, much like a marriage is. If one doesn’t want to do it, nothing in the world will make them. The reason why courts stay out of most relationships is because it is not violating a law to choose not to be in a relationship, and there are too many variables in the relationship for a court to even try to dictate what to do. Still, the Family Court uses “co-parenting” as a way to keep families in perpetual legal proceedings for years. The time has come for this to stop.

I do believe Family Court authorities can and should present information to divorcing parents about why co-parenting is best and explain what co-parenting means, but I do not believe that co-parenting has any place in the law, or in a court order. Families should follow the natural way of parenting that worked for them during the marriage based on their own morals, values and beliefs, either shared, or not shared, and with that, figure out the best way they can go forward after the marriage ends. If left to their own devices, I believe most people will enter a natural way of parenting after divorce that will be more peaceful than any court coerced relationship would be.

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Disclaimer

The information on this blog is based on personal opinions and insight. The writer is not an attorney or licensed psychologist.
Personal stories are shared to raise awareness.
The purpose is to help people disengage from the Family Court System and move into a happier and healthier life, but is not meant as legal advice or therapy.
If you need legal or psychological
advice, please seek the help of those professionals.